“We Cannot Escape History”

Abstract After the victory at Antietam, Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and hoped it would raise the intensity of the war. It did that, but in some ways that Lincoln had not intended. He wanted a righteous cause that would inspire the North—which it did—but it also inflamed the Confederacy.

The proclamation directed many Americans to their Bibles—some looking for ammunition to assail it, others looking for barricades to defend it. Did the proclamation align the nation with the Bible, or did it further separate it from God’s will? Lincoln hoped, with some confidence, that the proclamation would give the war the cause it needed to inspire more than it repulsed.

Only time, and more battles, would tell.